Dave Hanron - The Business Outsource Guy

Welcome to my outsourced services blog. I've developed this blog to share my expertise developed over my 25+ years of sales experience in the communications industry involving phone billing and services,call centers,IT solutions, cloud services, social media,and various other services

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Sunday, October 1, 2017

Channel sales is an interesting topic. Having been in “The Channel” in various sales
& senior management roles for more than 23 years, I’ve seen a lot.

The same trade shows years after year, some changing names,
several times. Same cities, same
hotels. How many times have you been to
Caesar’s in Vegas? Or the Venetian? Remember Jay Leno performing at Comptel? Magic Johnson speaking at Embarq? (one of my favorites) How about all the logo
changes you see on the polo shirts of our Channel peers?

Seems like every year we’re saying:

“Hey John, I didn’t
know you left Company xxx?”.

“Dave, I’ve been with Company yyy now for 6 months. Greatest place I’ve ever worked! Here’s my new card”

All too familiar, right?

But one thing never changes in the “Channel”. The simple fact that agent partners buy on
relationships - not product, price, commission, or bonus. (OK, maybe a few buy on commission & bonus). That’s the main reason we work in the “Channel”
vs working in “Direct Sales”. Relationship
is what wins business in the Channel.

My partners have customers they’ve worked with for more than
20 years. A direct sales rep stands no
chance of penetrating that customer because the partner has the relationship. It’s just another example of people buying
from people. It takes a different kind
of sales professional to understand how Channel sales works and then thrive at
it.

The days of convincing a partner to use your product simply
because it’s a great product are mostly gone.
Too many companies these days have the same products. Now if the partner (or often times, a friend
or master agent of that partner) has known the Channel Manager for years, the
odds of the partner listening to the new product pitch are greatly
enhanced. One thing I’ve learned over my
2+ decades working in the “Channel” is that I’ve made a lot of good friends all
over the country at a lot of companies. I
do most of my business with the people I’ve had the longest relationships
with. I learned a long time ago from a
gentleman I owe most of my success to, that the only way to be successful in
the “Channel” and last your entire career, is to build a solid reputation as an
honest & responsive sales resource for your partner. I’ve done my best to follow that advice.

If someone calls, answer the phone. If you miss their call, call them back. Not “within 24 hours because that’s your
company rule” but rather call them as soon as you’re free. Maybe it’s on your commute home or before you
run out to dinner. If you see their
email on Sunday, return it. Trust me, it
goes a long way in building the relationship.
Channel sales is 24 x 7 x 365. Or
as close to that as you can come.

I recently sat through a seminar with one of the nation’s
largest Masters, reviewing some Q&A they had done with their partners. You know what their #1 issue is in a Channel
Manager?

#1. RESPONSIVENESS

Not price, not commission, not SPIFF but Responsiveness. That says a lot about what a partner thinks
is important and I agree.

And remember, you may not always have the ideal product for
a customer, so if your product doesn’t fit and you know it, tell your
partner. If you’re my partner and you
know my product isn’t the best fit, tell me.
I’d rather hear “No, doesn’t work on this one Dave. We’ll try again on the next one” than spend
cycles on something I’ll never sign

It’s all relationship in the Channel. The more we all work on it and understand it,
the more money we’ll all make. And along
with all the friends and the Vegas trips, money plays a little role in it too!

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Hundreds of thousands of people try and fail at sales every
year. Ever wonder why?

Some people are just born sales professionals.Most have to learn the trade and work hard
every day learning new techniques.With
today’s social media, there’s plenty of material to choose from when looking to
expand your knowledge and understand what has made others successful.

Here’s my 2 cents for this week…..

There’s really 4 phases to sales, regardless of product
line:

1.Prospecting

2.Discovery

3.Presenting

4.Closing

I’m going to focus on #1…Prospecting.

Prospecting is merely finding people or businesses to sell
your product to.It involves deciding who
is the proper contact and how to best engage them.In my 25+ years of sales, I’ve learned many
techniques to open doors.Regardless of
the methods you choose, one thing remains constant:You MUST develop and stick to a consistent
outreach plan.

Most sales take multiple contacts before a prospect will listen
to your offer.I have had the best success
in the last 5 years using a combination of electronic messaging (includes
email, Twitter messages, Linkedin inmails, and videos) and the old fashioned
phone call, spread out over a 2 week outreach period.

My style has been electronic message of some type (your
choice, email or Linkedin) on Day #1.Day #2 involves a live phone call, including leaving your name and
general message (practice your pitch!) if you get voicemail.I often use Day #3 as on “off day” with no
contact.Day #4 is another phone call,
with no message if I get Voicemail.(Everyone
has Caller ID so you get your message across without actually leaving one.)Day #5 ends the first week with a different
form of electronic message.If you
emailed the 1st time, try Linkedin the 2nd.

During week 2, I will try the more "social media" style
contacts.I have had great success using
Twitter.Many professionals will not
have their work email on their phones, but will get a notice if they receive a
Twitter message.Twitter is an underused
ace in the hole. Since it is so rarely used in
business, people find it differentiates you from the crowd.It is my favorite technique.

The next few days can be designed however you feel most
comfortable, combining all the mentioned contact techniques in a pattern.Try mixing it up, and see what works best for
you.

After two weeks of attempts, I’ll put the prospect into a
follow up stage, giving them a break for 2-3 weeks before starting another
round of communications.It is not
uncommon for me to go through 4-5 rounds of outreach before I am able to
actually engage a prospect.Persistence
pays in sales.That is a common trait in
all successful sales professionals.

There is no golden rule that guarantees a prospect will talk
with you, but following a designed outreach plan can help increase the odds of
engagement for you.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

90 Days? 120 days? 180
Days? Longer? Really depends on your industry. In the telecommunications arena where I have
spent my career, the transition to internet based voice and cloud based data
has pushed us towards the 180 day mark.

Accepting the fact that the sales cycle is this long is your
first step to making the timeframe work for you. Once you have resigned yourself that the
customer’s new service will take 6 months to get installed, the next question becomes
“How do I get paid for my efforts?” Six
months is a long time without a paycheck.

We all know the sales manager pitch “Keep your funnel full and deals
will close each month. Anything less is
not enough activity”. I guess that’s
partially true but in some sections of the telecom industry, there is far too
much background work required for a sales professional to keep up the level of activity
to have a large deal close every month.

Working in the Channel, my focus has been on agent sales for
the last 25 years. An agent often sells
many products, offered by many different suppliers. Managing all the different offerings,
timelines, quoting processes, order paperwork, etc. can be daunting.

Independent sales agents work hard, leveraging personal
relationships, business relationships, referrals, past job connections,
industry peers, and other various prospecting techniques to find a new
customer. Add in the face to face
meeting with the prospect, the info gathering effort, design work across multiple
suppliers, presentations, decision making time, contract review, provisioning,
installation, cutover, and customer training, time is at a premium for the
agents prospecting efforts. I know very
few agents who can manage all of these needs well enough to close a large deal
every month to sustain their income.

So how do the successful agents keep consistent revenue
growth coming into their agency? The #1
technique involves shortening the sales cycle and getting commissionable
products on board immediately.

I have developed a highly successful technique to provide a “Roadmap
to New Technologies” and give the independent agent an opportunity to have commissionable
services installed within 14 days, and commissions in the bank within 30 days.

Using my company’s network services, we provide our agents
the opportunity to turn a prospect into a revenue producing customer without
interfering in the long term solution.
In fact, we make the transition easier, providing a clean, electronic
inventory on all current services, in one concise invoice, available on a state
of the art web portal. All with $0 cost
to convert, and no term or volume commitment to sign. When your new solution is ready to cut over,
simply send me an email and let me know which services to disconnect.

One of the key advantages we can give you is building
credibility with your new customer.
Rarely are you the only bidder on a project, but using my services allow
you the opportunity to show a client what your agency is able to deliver, while
others are talking solutions that won’t be installed for 6 months. You’ve cleaned up their inventory,
consolidated their billing, and typically saved them some money while doing
so. All without requiring a contract! My solution is delivered on a month to month
basis. Best guess is you’ll be the only
sales professional in the bidding with this advantage in your sales kit. And we'll pay you for it!

This approach has allowed my agents to gain a 30% growth in
commissions from my company over the last 12 months and it shows no sign of slowing down.

I‘m happy to share more information on how you can take
advantage of this technique and see more commissions flowing into your bank
account within 30 days.